Everyday stress as bad for our health as major trauma if we react badly and it builds up, research finds

When little hassles accumulate and we perceive things like children and commutes as very stressful, it can have a big effect on physical health, researchers say. Learning to roll with the punches, it seems, can protect you

When people talk about harmful stress – the kind that can affect health – they usually point to big, life-changing events, such as the death of a loved one. But a growing body of research suggests that minor, everyday stress – caused by flight delays, traffic jams, phones that run out of battery during an important call – can harm health, too, and even shorten lifespans.

One traffic jam a week isn’t going to kill you, of course. Psychologists say it is the nonstop strains of everyday life that can add up.

“These hassles can have a big impact on physical health and well-being, particularly when they accumulate and we don’t have time to recover from one problem before another hits us,” says California-based psychologist Melanie Greenberg, author of The Stress-Proof Brain.

Chronic daily hassles can lead to increased blood pressure, which puts you at risk of heart disease, explains Carolyn Aldwin, director of the Centre for Healthy Ageing Research at Oregon State University. She adds that it can also raise the levels of our stress hormones, a process that affects our immune system, and can lead to chronic inflammation, a condition associated with a host of serious illnesses, including cancer.

It is not necessarily the exposure to the continuous streams of minor stressors that can take a toll, but how we react.

In a 2016 study, researchers interviewed about 900 people about the frequency with which they experienced stress and had them evaluate the severity of it. They also tested their resting heart rate variability (HRV), the variation in intervals between heartbeats. (A higher HRV is associated with a healthy response to stress; a lower one has been associated with increased risk for heart disease and death.)

The researchers found that it was not the number of stressful events experienced that was associated with lower HRV, but how a person perceived their stress and then reacted to it emotionally.

In a 2014 study of 1,300 men, Aldwin and other researchers had participants rank situations they encountered during the course of a day on a stress scale of 0 to 4. Using a list that included such items as “your kids”, “your garden” and “your commute to work”, the researchers found that men who perceived their everyday hassles as very stressful had a similar mortality risk as people who consistently reported more highly stressful life events, such as the death of a loved one.

“Men who rated daily lives as ‘extremely’ stressful were three times more likely to die during the study than those who reported low levels of daily stress,” Aldwin says. Learning to roll with the punches, she says, can protect you.

People say they go from 0 to 10, but when you really pay attention, there are some warning signs, like clenched fists, a flushed face or a racing heart

Amy Morin

While it is normal to lose one’s cool from time to time, some people may be hard-wired to overreact, Aldwin says. “People who are higher in neuroticism, meaning those who have strong emotions that are easily aroused, are much more likely to get upset over minor problems,” she says.

She points to research suggesting that people who are naturally more volatile tend to have a more reactive physiological response to perceived threats, such as increased heart rates and cortisol levels, and can take longer to calm down, which makes it much harder to regulate emotions.

Sometimes, overblown reactions – such as throwing a tantrum over a train delay or dirty dishes left in the sink – are a matter of context. “Being late to work may not be a major thing unless your boss has gotten mad at you for being late too much,” Aldwin says. A minor dispute with your spouse might not be a big thing, she says, unless it occurs within the context of ongoing problems that are continually stressing the marriage.

Greenberg adds that being worn down by chronic stress can also make us more vulnerable to day-to-day irritations, work problems or interpersonal conflicts that can cause us to overreact. When we are chronically stressed and on high alert, Greenberg says, “our fight, flight or freeze response never turns off, we get a build-up of cortisol in our bodies, and that makes us vulnerable to diseases”.

Even for people with a propensity to sweat the small stuff, there are strategies to help regulate their emotions, psychologists say. Florida-based psychotherapist Amy Morin, for instance, who is also the author of 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do, advises her patients to notice physical symptoms that indicate stress levels are rising.

“People say they go from 0 to 10, but when you really pay attention, there are some warning signs, like clenched fists, a flushed face or a racing heart,” she says. Recognising and then managing your physiological response – such as by excusing yourself from the situation or taking some deep breaths – can stop an angry escalation before it really gets going, she adds.

In a study published in 2016 in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, researchers asked more than 100 university students and staff members to track minor annoyances they experienced (such as traffic or a dead phone battery) and simple pleasures (socialising with friends, engaging in a hobby) over the course of six days. They also recorded daily progress toward goals that they hoped to achieve.

Ask yourself: is this really worth getting so upset over that I’m willing harm my health?

Carolyn Aldwin

The researchers found that goal progress appeared to suffer on days with a high number of minor annoyances and relatively few simple pleasures. But on days when the participants reported a high number of simple pleasures, the effect of small annoyances was buffered and didn’t get in the way of their daily goals.

As researcher Vanessa Patrick explains, “being mindful of small, everyday pleasures, which are readily accessible to most people at little or no cost, can help dampen the impact of everyday annoyances and contribute greatly to our happiness and well-being.”

Instead of personalising a problem – as in “Why do these things always happen to me?” – it is helpful to view annoyances through a fact-based lens, Morin says. For example, reminding yourself that there are millions of cars on the road can help you realise that traffic jams are inevitable, not personal.

“Instead of wishing the situation was different or insisting the circumstances are unfair, focus on your reaction,” Morin says.

While you cannot control the speed of traffic, she explains, you can control what you do while you are in your car, such as listening to music or tuning in to your favourite podcast. Thinking about the facts and refocusing your attention can also help reduce the intensity of negative emotions, and it aids with accepting that annoyances are just a normal part of life.